Everything She Ever Wanted (39 page)

even the slightest hope that he and Cindi would get back together, she

smashed it.
 
"Your girlfriend prefers women," she said flatly.
 
"I

don't know why she ever got engaged to you-maybe to cover up her real

life.
 
She's a lesbian.

It was true, but Cindi had never wanted Kent to know.
 
This was 1965,

and she loved him enough to let him go with less devastating truths.

Reeling from that disclosure, Kent was in despair.
 
And yet within a

short time Pat chose to hit him with an even more stunning

revelation.

Kent had always believed that he was the natural son of Clifford

Radcliffe, and no one had even hinted otherwise.
 
Although Kent had yet

to prove himself to the man he admired so much, he was proud to be his

son.
 
But, of course, he was not.
 
According to his birth certificate,

he had been born out of wedlock long before Margureitte ever met

Radcliffe.

Again it was his sister who lacerated him with the truth.
 
In a moment

of rage, Pat turned her fury on her brother and spat out, "You're not

our kind, you know.
 
You don't even know who you are!

You think Papa's your father but he isn't.
 
You're a bastard, and

you're so stupid you don't even know it!"

It was such a cruel thing for her to do.
 
The little boy who had

endured deafness, the teenager who had survived a broken heart, the man

who saw one marriage and his hopes for another fail, had everything he

believed in taken away from him in those appalling sentences.

Pat could hardly have believed that she was Clifford Radcliffe's true

issue.
 
She was older than Kent; in all likelihood, she and Kent had

both been fathered by the same man.
 
However, she clearly saw herself

as superior to Kent; in her mind, she was aristocracy and he was an

interloper from a lower stratum of society.
 
Once she had opened the

Pandora's box of Kent's genetic heritage, she reminded him of his true

roots every chance she got.

There were witnesses who heard her do it.

Kent was never the same.
 
He dated again, but his heart wasn't in it.

He drank too much and his abilty to deal with loss was almost gone.

Cindi wept for his pain, but she couldn't be what he needed.

Christmas of 1965 was tense, no matter how hard Boppo tried to make it

festive.
 
Kent was so depressed.
 
He had been to Alabama to see Cindi,

and even she found him so changed, so bitter.

Gil was often overseas.
 
He had become a shadow husband and shadow

father.
 
The tight little family group on Dodson Drive didn't need him;

he was as alienated as Kent was.

Kent was living on Dodson Drive, but only temporarily; he was trying to

get into an apartment of his own.
 
Pat's kids wanted him around, but

his sister railed at him constantly.
 
Boppo was torn between the two of

them, but as always she sided with her daughter, guessing that Kent was

stronger than Pat.

Kent was dating a flight attendant in College Park, Georgia, in the

latter part of 1965.
 
She was beautiful and she really cared for him,

but Kent could no longer risk trusting any woman enough to fall in

love.
 
When the girl became pregnant, she kept the news to herself,

sensing that the timing wasn't right and that Kent's feelings for her

weren't strong enough.
 
She bided her time, waiting for the right

moment to tell him.

It never came.

On February 1, 1966, Officer M. C. Faulkner of the East Point Police

Department received a Signal 59 directing him to 2555

Stewart Avenue, "just in front of Nalley's Chevrolet."
 
A Signal 59

meant a dead body.
 
He expected to see an accident.
 
And, indeed, there

was a minor traffic accident on Stewart Avenue.
 
An Oldsmobile sedan

parked at the curb had a smashed right front fender and the tire on

that side was flat.
 
Nearby, Faulkner saw a station wagon with the

tailgate dented.

Officer G. H. Wade told Faulkner that he had been called to the scene

by a salesman at Nalley's.
 
In response to their questions, Mary

Schroder said she had been driving her 1962 Ford station wagon south on

Stewart Avenue with her attorney husband, James, as a passenger.
 
"I

was making a right turn into Nalley's when my car was struck in the

rear by that Oldsmobile.
 
I think it's a '62 too.
 
The car then passed

our car and pulled to the curb."

James Schroder picked up the strange account.
 
"The driver looked back

at us as he passed.
 
I got out and started to walk over to his car and

then I saw him slump over in the seat."

A Nalley's salesman said he had heard a loud report-"like a

gunshot"-just before the accident, but another witness told the

officers that the Oldsmobile had passed his car just before the crash

and that the driver, a young man, had been smoking a cigarette.

Just when the gunshot had occurred was a moot point.
 
The driver of the

Oldsmobile was dead, his body stretched out across the front seat with

his head resting near the right front door.

His feet, clad in Hush Puppy shoes, still rested next to the

accelerator and brake.
 
There was no blood apparent; he might have only

fallen asleep.
 
But a .22-caliber pump-action, single-shot rifle lay on

the floor on the passenger side on a pile of crushed newspapers.
 
The

recoil had left it pointed at the dead man's knee, but its single shot

had done its work.

On the slight chance that the young man might be alive, he was rushed

to Grady Memorial Hospital, but he was dead on arrival.

A driver's license and Social Security card in a wallet found on the

dead man identified him as Reginald Kent Radcliffe, twenty-six, of

2378

Dodson Drive.

Sergeant Haines of the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office arrived

to take charge of the body.
 
The ME's office classited Kent's death as

"violent" and as a suicide.
 
He had suffered a "pressed contact gunshot

wound to the mid-chest through the clothing."
 
He would have died

almost instantly.
 
A blood alcohol test revealed that the percentage of

ethyl alcohol in Kent's system was .13.
 
In most states, .10 is the

standard for legal intoxication.

Investigators removed Kent's belongings from his impounded car.
 
His

wallet held $2.40.
 
There was an athletic bag, a cigarette lighter,

cigarettes, two ballpoint pens, a second leveraction .22 rifle, his

glasses (in the backseat), and, also in the rear seat, a partially

empty pint bottle of rum.

There was no sophisticated forensic science test that could determine

just when Kent had fired a bullet into his heart.
 
Was he dead, or even

dying, when he hit the rear of the Schroders' car with his right front

fender?
 
Probably not; James Schroder was sure the driver had glanced

back at them after the collision.

Had Kent intended to kill himself sometime that first day of

February?

Had he driven around East Point with the gun poised and ready?
 
Or had

the traffic accident been only the final straw to a man who believed

that his life was without joy?
 
Had he grabbed the gun and fired in a

fatally impulsive gesture?

The East Point investigators even considered the possibility that there

might have been another passenger, that Kent might have been

murdered.

His glasses were unbroken in the backseat.
 
He was so nearsighted that

he could not have seen to drive without them.

No, it was more likely that the force of the blast knocked them from

his face and over the seat.
 
They dismissed the murder theory.
 
Too

many people had observed Kent's car after the accident, and no one had

emerged and run away.

Kent had destroyed himself.

It was early evening when the notifying officer knocked on the front

door at Dodson Drive.
 
Margureitte answered, feeling a premonition; no

one but strangers ever came to the front door.

When she saw the uniform and before the officer spoke a word, she cried

out, "My God!
 
Kent's killed himself!"

Pat stood down the hall, watching.
 
She tried to hug her mother, but

Margureitte pushed her away, inconsolable.
 
Colonel Radcliffe went to

the morgue to make the formal identification.

Kent's death made no headlines; there was only a short article on the

back pages of the Atlanta Yournal.
 
His obituary was even shorter.
 
No

mention was made of the manner of his death.

Survivors were listed as his parents, Colonel and Mrs.
 
Clifford B.

Radcliffe, East Point, and a sister, Mrs.
 
G. H. Taylor, East Point.

On Thursday, February 3, 1966, services were held in Hemperley's

Funeral Parlor and Kent was buried in Onslow Memorial Park in

Jacksonville, North Carolina.
 
Cindi Alan iklipped a ring on his finger

before his casket was closed.
 
It was engraved, "To Kent from

Jessica."

But there would never be a Jessica.
 
Nor would there be another baby,

one that Kent had not known about.
 
The flight attendant who had been

carrying his child had an abortion.
 
She grieved terribly, but not for

very long.
 
Six months later she was a passenger in a two-seater

private plane.
 
It crashed, killing her and the pilot on impact.

Pat was an only child now.
 
Kent was gone forever.
 
The only obvious